


the rhythm of our veins’ deep eloquence

by babyyaga



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27741589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyyaga/pseuds/babyyaga
Summary: the aftermath of a situation in which nate has to drink from the detective to be able to keep them safe.alternatively: pretty girl comforts sexy vampire.
Relationships: Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	the rhythm of our veins’ deep eloquence

He can taste the blood in the back of his throat, and it’s wonderful and vile. Sweet seawater flooding his nose and mouth. Hard to breathe. Hard to stop breathing. Hard to stop. He pulls back and opens his eyes, looks up at her -- all so slowly, like he’s trudging through cold molasses. He watches Lucy raise her hand to press against her neck, and watches as the blood begins to seep through her fingers, dribble down her wrist. 

He had, at the time, been galvanized by the fear in her face. This contemptible action was all in the service of protecting her. But everything is so much less certain when one considers it a second time. He notes, now, how she looks at him. And the thought creeps into the back of his mind that it may not have been the Trappers who brought those frightened tears to her eyes. 

The feeling in his limbs is an echo of the actual sensation, that raw power so dizzying that his mind can’t recreate it even in dreams. And even this diluted effect is... astonishing. Terrible. Marvelous.   
It had provoked a tittering frenzy in him, one that was only barely strangled by the sharp, acidic taste that cut through it all -- one he recognized then as he does now to be the taste of endorphins, of pain and panic. And this was Lucy, not prey -- Lucy, scared and hurt and trusting him. 

In the moment, he had been singularly focused on keeping her safe. Second thoughts brought hesitation, mistakes -- there was no room for any of it. But here, reliving it so slowly, dragged through the pantomime brutality --

Nate jolts awake with that first wet crunch of bones and organs in his ears, pushing himself upright with hammering heart and spine shivering in panic. His jaw is clenched and won’t release, so he takes long breaths through his nose. It’s late at night -- or, very early morning, as the digital clock on the nightstand tells him. Storm clouds block the moonlight that normally drowns Lucy’s bedroom -- instead, droplets on the windows catch the streetlights in the parking lot, with no other light intruding, nor sound save the gentle hum of the apartment’s electronics. 

And Lucy is there, asleep beside him, blanket bunched around her ribs. And any other night, he’d wrap his arms around her and bury his nose in her hair, but the thought of it makes his hands clench into fists tonight. It’s the smell -- even here, even just lying beside her. It brings bile rising in his throat; it brings anger and disgust roiling in his chest. Not at her, but at himself. 

He hears her draw a deep breath and shift, evidence of her waking, and then she rolls over to face him. Her eyes search for his silhouette in the dark, and on finding him, her lips curve into a soft, sleepy smile. “Hello,” she whispers. 

He’s going to reach out, to swallow down his turmoil and hold her and force himself not to dwell on this. But there’s a bandage on her neck, white gauze stuck to her skin. It’s the second one they had to put on her because the first one soaked through. This one is pristine, but he can’t pull his gaze from it. 

Will it scar, he wonders? Will he be reminded of what he did to her every time he sees her? Will he always be pulled into the memory of cupping the base of her skull and hearing her whimper in pain as he broke the skin, and worse, for just a moment, not caring?

And will he think of it even if it doesn’t scar?

Has he sullied this simulacrum he’s been acting out -- this fantasy of domestic humanity? 

“Nate?” Her expression falls into concern, and she pushes herself up, and then reaches across to the bedside table and clicks on the lamp. Her bedroom floods with warm yellow light and it turns the endless expanse of the night outside her window into a simple sheet of black glass. The world becomes the two of them and the familiar comfort of her bedroom.“What is it?” 

He forces himself to look at her, to look up from her neck and to her face, to the concern in her eyes -- but not before she can follow his gaze. She brings two fingers to brush the gauze, and then lets out a breath and reaches out to touch him. 

It’s no trouble to avoid it, though he can practically hear his own heart crunching like ice underfoot at the little look of hurt she gives him when he does. She wants to comfort him. She always does. She’s the loveliest, most angelic woman he’s ever known, and up until now he’s always trusted himself to handle her gently. And now he looks at her and thinks of how he lied to her when he promised her, terrified and trembling faced with a room of vampires, that he would never hurt her. 

Lucy’s hand hangs in the air for a moment, poised to cup the air where his cheek had been. She lets it drop into her lap. “Talk to me, love. Please.”

He opens his mouth to gently dismiss her concern. Tell her to go back to sleep. Utter a white lie and insist he’s fine. He wants this in as equal a measure as he wants to sob into her chest. And they tug on him, back and forth. In the end he does nothing, says nothing, but stare at her hand where it’s splayed atop her quilt. 

He swallows and watches as she eases herself out of bed. Slips on the green dressing gown tossed over the upholstered bench at the foot of her bed. She leaves the door slightly ajar when she goes, and the warm light from her bedside lamp spills out into the hall. 

He’d cherished more times than he could count the way that exhilarating scent lingered anywhere she spent time. When she went home for the night without him and he would curl up in the library just where she’d been sat -- it was almost as if she hadn’t gone. Her clothes, her car, her office, her bed. But it had always been theoretical. The most enticing perfume any lady had ever worn -- but just perfume. And now it is... 

Now it is a meal he’s taken a bite of and must stop himself from finishing. And it lingers all around him, clings to him like wet cloth.

He balls his hands into her flat sheet, then forces himself to release when he feels the fabric start to tear. Lucy. Not a meal. Not prey. He’s better than this, isn’t he? Even with this rancid sort of hunger knocking at the back of his throat? 

He hears the stove igniter click on out in the kitchen, hears the clink of metal-on-metal that suggests a kettle being put on the burner, hears cupboards open and shut. She’s making tea, and it’ll be just how he likes it. It’ll be better than he can make it. Because she’s Lucy, who knows him and loves him. Still, despite what he’s done. 

The thought soothes something in him, just a little, as he slips out of bed after her. 

She’s seated on a counter top in the kitchen when he emerges, legs dangling over the edge. She looks up out of what seemed to be a pensive mood, relief and affection flitting across her face when she sees him in the doorway. 

They say one another’s name in greeting, both at once. Another second ticks by before she holds out her hand to him again, and he takes it this time, gingerly. As he closes the distance between them, he raises it to his lips and kisses it. Carefully, for his own sake. Tense, like he expects her to jerk her hand away out of fear. She doesn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“What for?”

He opens his mouth to speak, and the word bite sticks in his throat. Caught up in all that hunger, maybe. All the guilt. But his eyes are pulled to her neck again, to where he knows her pristine bandage is, now hidden by her hair, and she clicks her tongue in sudden understanding. 

“I don’t want you to be sorry for that.” She tugs his hand a little, pulling him closer. Not in any forceful way, but he hardly wants to resist. “I know how much you hated doing it. How horrible and difficult it was. And you did it anyway, and you saved both of us. I’m proud of you for that. I’m grateful. I don’t want you to be sorry.” 

She speaks so softly, so gently, like she’s afraid of startling him. Skims her hands up his arms as she speaks, opening herself to an embrace but not insisting on it, not pulling him into it. She would never have had to: he practically collapses into her, head on her shoulder, arms around her waist, balling his fists in the silk satin of her dressing gown. 

He stands there, silent, for a long moment, listening to her heartbeat, concentrating on the pressure of her hand rubbing between his shoulder blades. Not breathing. Focusing on everything else. And when he finally lets out the breath he’d been holding in, accompanying it is a rushed, “I never wanted you to see me like this.” His voice cracks a little when he says it. 

“I know.” Lucy holds him for a moment longer, rocking slowly back and forth, and then she pulls back enough that they can look one another in the eye. “If it helps to hear it, I still trust you completely. I trust you even if you don’t trust yourself.” 

He opens his mouth to rebut, though he’s not sure what with. He doesn’t get the chance before she kisses him -- soft, chaste. She rests her forehead against his when she pulls back. “And the fact that this troubles you proves to me I’m right to do so.”

They linger there for a moment. It is Lucy who pulls away again, giving him a final little squeeze before slipping off the counter and over to where their tea has been steeping. Quaint hand-painted teacups. Tea balls with little kittens on the ends instead of metal hooks. All very whimsical and charming. Very Lucy. 

It’s much like the tides, being near her. An ebb-and-flow of turbulence in his chest, guilt and anger and disgust, both ignited and assuaged by her presence. More doused, he thinks. Low tide. With each second, the flow getting weaker, further from shore. She’s here. She’s alive. She’s unharmed. She loves him. That is enough, isn’t it?

He eases himself into one of the stools set at the kitchen island, and she seats herself beside him, sets his tea on the counter, rests her head on his shoulder. “Nate?”

“Mm?”

“I don’t think any less of you because of what happened today. The opposite, in fact. I feel incredibly loved.”

“You are incredibly loved.”

She tilts her head up a little, soft smile on her lips. “I know. And I’m... terrified. I don’t know what you need right now. I can’t imagine what this is like but -- but I don’t want you to convince yourself that you hurt or betrayed me or that I don’t love you. Because I do. And I wish I could make this okay. I wish I could help.”

He slips his arm around her then, pulls her close to his side, kisses the top of her head. “I don’t want you to worry for me, my love.”

“But I do. I will. Let me return the favor and fret over you for once.”

They abide again in silence before turning each to their own teacups. His is made the way only Lucy can make it. A blend she doesn’t even drink but keeps around because it’s his favorite, with just the right amount of cream. 

He swallows and finds its smoke and spice to be all he can taste.

Foolish, perhaps, to think that their love could be out-matched by something so base as nature. Foolish, to doubt its constancy.

**Author's Note:**

> title's a line from a natalie clifford barney poem.


End file.
